Leeches
by cillabub
Summary: Combeferre's roommate has problems understanding him. Warnings for: blood (lots of it), bad French, mild Enjolras angst, extensive slash, Prouvaire torture, etc. Sounds worse than it is...or not. ;-)
1. Discovery

They never told us how ungainly it seems to have to bandage oneself. They always tell us to wind the strip tightly, holding the cotton swab with the other hand. This takes on a new difficulty when what you wish to wrap is the wrist attached to the hand that was intending to hold the swab in place.

It added another element of complexity when I was trembling as I attempted this feat. Something warm and dark was dripping down my arm, onto my trousers and the floorboards beneath me—was it wine, perhaps, or—? I could hardly recall then; my mind was swimming, and it could have been wine for all I knew. And yet—it had the smell of copper and pain and an indescribable bitterness. For all my sensibilities, it fascinated me, and my mind drifted to the experiments carried out across the Channel by a fellow named Blundell. What did they concern?—my mind couldn't focus—I suppose it involved transfusions. Yes, that must be it…postpartal transfusions.

__

What really bemuses me is bloodletting. What Egyptian shaman, huddled over his papyrus texts, determined once and for all that blood was a humor, and must be regulated in order to preserve good health? This forerunner of modern medicine must have been regarded as either a madman or a genius of his age. And now, they teach us so many various methods…"Well, sometimes, you will find that your patient prefers the spring-loaded lancet, which the Britons call the phleam, to the traditional lancet. They may even wish the use of a scarificator or the 'cupping' procedure…the prepared doctor must be well-acquainted with these methods, as well as with leeching."

Leeches. I glanced at the shelf above my desk, where my instruments lay spilling from my bag. Yes, of course, there was the jar of the slimy creatures. I tried not to think of them as I struggled with the bandages; even the cold lancet feels more steady in my hand than the wriggling leeches. And, I might argue, the lancet itself requires some skill, more so than those reprehensible little animals.

Where _was_ my lancet?—Ah, good, I'd simply let it fall beside my knee. The handle was slick with that dark wetness, and I wiped my hand on my trousers so that I might get a better grip on it; as I've said, it takes a graceful and steady hand to wield that instrument. I'd given up on the bandages, and I stripped them away again with a grunt of frustration. I had more faith in that blade than in the clumsiness of my sticky fingers, and I let the lancet guide me, rather than vice versa. A gasp choked from me as the blade teased my wrist, dancing playfully along my vein, writing in its own spidery calligraphy, spinning those oozing webs across my skin. It licked me, then nipped me with a sudden display of audacity, and I could hear my own shuddering breaths groan in my ears. There was that wine again, tickling my arm—it must have been wine, I felt terribly intoxicated—and the blade seemed to laugh and drink deeply of this wine. I could not grasp the shapeless, merciless tingling that raced from my fingertips down my spine, and pleasure was exploding behind my eyeballs. I forced myself to pay attention, and supervise the blade in its caprices, lest it decide on a deeper course of action.

__

Naturally, they'll all attest to the fact that I'm an excellent student, extremely attentive to detail and never taking unnecessary risks. They all praise me for my adroit surgeon's fingers and my dexterity with the blade, few of them grasping how much practice it has taken for me to reach this level of skill.

As the lancet began to slip, my mind jolted back to reality. Time stopped as the blade dragged itself across my skin, and I bit my collar to keep from screaming. I allowed a glittering string of curses to push out instead, accompanied by ragged breaths rasping up my throat. Then, suddenly, there was light.

It was everywhere, flooding the room and giving it that sterile look of the dissection room in the medical wing. My eyes squeezed shut of their own volition, unable to support the blinding brightness, and the only thing that really pierced my consciousness was the incredible volume of liquid that felt as though it was now gushing down my arm and pooling about my knees. Even the nagging desperation of that matter could not induce me to expose my sensitive eyes to that fierce yellow light. It was a voice, rough and urgent and in rather close proximity, that startled me into opening my eyes.

"_Mon dieu_! What in hell d'you suppose you're up to?"

It was such a familiar voice, but words sounded as grating against my ears as the light had against my eyes. The accent was rhythmically provincial in nature, with that eloquent, sing-song syntax and quaintly handsome pronunciation. I knew the speaker immediately by the peculiar sweetness and strength of baritone, which could only belong to one person on earth. Despite the fact that the accent was not usually so pronounced, it could only be Enjolras, my young roommate. Even the colloquialism, 'What d'you suppose you're up to,' was typical of the region from which Enjolras hailed—the countryside near Nice, in the south of the country. They were the only words that I could truly understand in my present state. I, however, had no similar colloquialism to answer him with.

"I love you."

I still, to this day, have not figured out exactly why I said it to him. I think that it was that exact moment perhaps that I saw the gruesome pool I was kneeling in, and I realized that I might swoon without ever having the chance to say that to someone. Enjolras, of course, did not understand any complexity behind my words. He was, I need not say, no philosopher. 

Through my hazy vision, I saw fear plainly reflected in his eyes. "_Je t'aime bien_," he echoed, "_mais_…" He ran to the door, but to my eyes, he seemed to move sluggishly, as though underwater. "Madame Lacour!_ Amenez-vous un docteur_! Madame!" he screamed at our landlady, whose room was located at the bottom of the stairwell. He reached my side again just as I managed to get a hold of the bandages I had cast aside earlier and was feebly attempting to staunch my gash with them.

"Uhn," was all I said to him then, quite unable to form coherent words.

"Combeferre, _mon cher_, _ne parle pas_, _ça va_, _ça va_, _mon ami_, _je suis là_. _Je t'aime aussi_. _Est-ce que je te peux aider avec ces bandages_?" Instead of kneeling beside me, he pulled me from the crimson pool, leading me to the nearest bed—his—and sitting me down on the edge of it. I couldn't force myself to understand a word he was saying…it all sounded like gibberish to me, and yet, I nodded dumbly in response to his questioning look. "_Bien_, _bien_, _ça va_," he murmured repeatedly, and I just watched with glazed eyes as he wrapped my wrists in cloth. Every time his fingertips brushed my skin, I could not help but wonder what his agile hand would feel like, guiding the lancet over my wrist, and I shivered in barely concealed pleasure at the very thought. Having been his roommate for two and a half years, I knew as well as anyone that Enjolras was one of those men who could be extremely and unwittingly erotic. I don't think he was even aware of his own power, or rather, the power that he could have had, over me.

"_N'aie peur_,_ n'aie jamais peur_," he was whispering, even as a middle aged man burst into our room with a black bag tucked under one arm. He went immediately to Enjolras, saying something incomprehensible like: "_Je m'appelle Dr_._ Sorel_,_ messieur_. _Comment va-t-il_?" All this jumbled speech was making me dizzy; my head swam, and I slid down against my roommate's shoulder, whimpering. I felt Enjolras's hand on my shoulder, rubbing gently to keep me still, but he was ignorant of the cause of my distress, as he began to talk to the man in quick, breaking phrases. I could not concentrate on a single word, but his accent somehow seemed thicker and more obvious than I'd ever heard it before, and that was the strongest indication that he was deeply upset—he ordinarily took the strictest precautions to make certain that that provincial accent remained veiled behind a carefully adopted Parisian dialect.

"Please…please stop…" I muttered, and I think I was speaking in Latin, although it could have been Persian for all I knew by that point. "You're confusing me…"

The older man stared at me, then turned to Enjolras. "_Qu'est-ce qu'il a parlé_?"

"_Il a parlé latin_," Enjolras explained. He spoke to me slowly, with a tone like one that he might use with a child, of patience stretched skillfully to fit a situation. "_Montre-les-il_." And when I gave him a blank look, he added, "_Tes poignets_," taking my poorly-bound wrists and extending them towards the stranger. I was far too weak to resist, half-fainting as I was in Enjolras's lap, but the older man took my wrists, examining them quickly and opening his mysterious bag, which I recognized as the same sort that I was learning to use at the university. Out leapt a roll of sterile, dove-white bandages and a bottle carrying an unidentified chemical, which was soon applied to my wounds. The gashes shrieked for mercy, and my tongue translated this into a sort of soulless cry, a rebellion against whatever foul substance he was smearing onto me. Enjolras squeezed my shoulder ever-so-slightly, perhaps as a measure of comfort, but it was too much. I faded out of consciousness, leaving behind those concerned bystanders and their maddening, puzzling speech.


	2. Misunderstanding

"Hush," said a voice before I was even conscious of being conscious. I felt no urge to open my eyes, only a burning wish that the person speaking would leave me alone so that I could fall back into oblivion. But at the same time, I recognized that voice, and also the fact that its owner would not leave me.

"Go," I said, feeling too sluggish to say more.

"I will not," he answered, his accent once more the chiseled, collected Parisian variety. "Open your eyes, Etienne."

I complied, if only to show him that I was fine, and that he ought to let me be. Blearily, my vision adjusted, and I found that I was in a bed, and my young roommate was seated beside me, his gentle hand lying on mine, which was lying on my stomach. Then I realized that he wasn't staring at me; his eyes were fixed on our hands, or rather, on my wrist, which was bound tightly with bandages.

"What's wrong?" I asked, with an attempt at innocence, but the hoarseness of my voice undermined my intention.

"Why did you do it?" he wondered with a rhetoric flair. "Why didn't you come to me, talk to me…? I didn't even know you were upset…"

I groaned inwardly. To my mind, there was nothing worse than a man who turned a simple habit into a melodramatic tableau concerning self-mutilation. There was absolutely no need for dramatics, and I told him so to his face.

"What are you talking about?" he yelped. "How can you tell me there's no need for 'dramatics,' as you put it? You tried to…for God's sake…you tried to…"

I sighed. "I'm not suicidal, you silly boy." I moved my hand beneath his, so that I could grasp at his fingers. "Don't presume things you know nothing about."

"Well, what in hell d'you expect me to say?!" he exploded, much to my surprise. He went on to rage at me, his hand gripping mine, the walls around his restraint collapsing more with each exclaimed question. "You scared the living Christ out of me when I found you last night, do you even realize that?! When you were doing that to yourself, didn't you _think_, for even a moment, how _I_ might feel about this idiocy that you've gotten yourself into? Are you so _selfish_ that you couldn't understand how this might affect the people who care about you?"

I could not tear my eyes from his hands, which were gesturing wildly. They were so pale that I could almost distinguish the winding, living veins beneath the fragile skin; I was transfixed. He had never seemed so beautiful to me as he did at that moment. I wished for one foolish moment that I could make him understand the pulsing, heady attraction of the wine flowing through those veins.

"This isn't the controversial issue you would make of it," I said firmly, plucking at his sleeve with one hand. "I practice with the lancet because I genuinely want to perfect my skills—"

"Good God." He snorted and turned away before I'd even finished speaking.

"Well, what did you suppose I was doing? Did you think I was trying to flee this world"—I struck an exaggerated, Shakespearean pose, the back of my hand thrown against my forehead—"escape the pain of existence, end the darkness in my tortured soul?"

"I'm glad you find this to be such a light matter," he replied brusquely. "I don't think you understand that I don't scare easily."

I dropped my pose with a small sigh. "I'm sorry that I frightened you, even if you do make too much of too little. I hadn't meant to hurt you, Enjolras, you have to try to understand."

"You're not aiding my comprehension," he said tiredly, rubbing my hand with a habitual absent-mindedness.

I watched his face, which was bent over me; his eyes were downcast and ringed with shadow and golden eyelashes, his mouth small with its delicate lips pursed, the usual pallor in his cheeks tinged to a gray concern. He seemed like a guardian angel, exhausted from his task of keeping me in this world, and I pitied him suddenly, realizing that he could never fully understand because he had not yet found the way to his own nirvana. He was actually incapable of feeling the depth of emotion that I could feel, and that sudden epiphany dismayed me to such an extent that I was physically repulsed by my earlier fantasies of him wielding my lancet. All I saw now was the youth of the boy sitting beside me—I had almost forgotten how young he could appear sometimes, if only because he _was_ young. I raised one bandaged hand to his cheek.

"I'm sorry."

He glanced at me, his eyes flicking across my own, then away again as though uninterested in what they had seen there. "I'm sorry too, for yelling at you. I just don't know what else there is to say." He started suddenly, then added slowly, as if just remembering, "And you said that you loved me."

Had I? I could hardly remember, but it sounded like something I might say. "Did I?"

"Yes," he said. "You told me you loved me, when I found you here." And, naturally, I could have predicted his next question with my eyes closed. "Why?"

"Because I was frightened," I answered without hesitation, although I realized in almost the same instant that that wasn't quite true, but it was the closest approximation I could reach at the moment. "I was afraid that I'd die without saying it."

He flinched at my cold diction. "So you said it because you wanted to say it, and I happened to be the only one nearby that could be on the receiving end of such a statement?"

"If I had to say it to someone," I said matter-of-factly, "I'm sincerely glad it was you."

"Do you? Love me, that is?" His expression was mildly and oddly amused, something I could not have been expecting.

I had to suppress a laugh. "I would be lying if I said I didn't. But Enjolras, your ego doesn't need to hear that."

He did laugh then; the sound was stretched and hollow, like the flat reverberation of Sénégal's drums. "You're incorrigible."


	3. Midnight

I rubbed my eyes, hoping to stimulate my fraying nerves as I reread one of my essays, which I had fallen into the habit of referring to as my "compulsory opus," for what seemed like the hundredth time. Enjolras was lying stretched out on his bed, turning a page of his newspaper, and his eyelashes flickered almost imperceptibly, the only sign that he was close to falling asleep. 

I blinked, hard, my eyelids groaning beneath their own weight, and set myself to my task anew, unable to concentrate. I chanced a glance at the shelf; the leeches still sat there, foul-smelling jelly in their jar, leering at me. I shuddered and turned away quickly. My lancet was nowhere to be found: I had conducted an exhaustive search for it the previous night, after promising Enjolras that I wouldn't do anything imprudent while he was at Musain. He must have had it destroyed, or sold, or something, the well-meaning fool. I thought briefly of borrowing one of those new-fangled spring-loaded contraptions from the medical wing, but quickly realized that nothing would do for me but the nearly antiquated hand-held lancet.

I felt the unnerving glare of the leeches, burning a hole between my shoulder blades, and felt that the bloody creatures were sucking the thoughts right out of my mind. _That_ was disconcerting. I caught a glimpse of Enjolras out of the corner of my eye; he was dozing, his head slumped down onto his chest, his newspaper draped over his stomach. He had the complexion of a corpse, and I wondered for one irrational moment if he even had any blood in him. No wonder the leeches didn't bother with him.

I shoved the papers on the desk away from me, and stood from my chair, trying to ignore the gleaming jar ruling the shelf. Enjolras shifted in his sleep, attracting my attention again, and I followed my gaze to his bedside, where I stood staring down at him. He was so delicate in repose, his limbs arranged in a sort of asymmetrical dance; four of his shirt buttons were undone, leaving the fabric to lie loosely open over the milky skin. The fingers of my left hand itched to stroke the exposed flesh of his chest, but I doubted the pleasant reaction that I may receive from such a gesture. A more poetic man may have found verse to describe the sublime uncertainty of that instant, but I contented myself with murmuring passages I could recall from my studies of Kant.

"'Taste that requires an added element of charm and emotion for its delight has not emerged from barbarism.'"

I reached out and ran my fingers across his cheek, letting them slip down over his white throat, where they paused of their own accord. The artery throbbing beneath my fingertips sent tremors down my spine, and he must have sensed my trembling, because he rolled onto his side, allowing my fingers to slip from his skin. I could only sigh and retreat to my bed, where I sank to the sheets with a surprising amount of something resembling relief, although I wasn't particularly certain why. Surely I didn't fear him; he was so young in comparison to me, and he was much too taciturn to be angry with me for touching him a bit. After all, who could truly blame me, with him being as desirably disheveled as he was?

I did not dare glance at the shelf again. I knew that that living medical equipment of mine was staring at me again, and I dreaded to even acknowledge its existence, leastaways not without my lancet there to comfort me. I stretched out on my bed, drifting in and out of troubled rest and catching bits of Enjolras's deep mumbling as he fidgeted in his sleep.


	4. Interlude: Enjolras

**a/n: This is a rather messed-up chapter. Probably the first indication that this story should be rated R. But you've been warned, so don't whine to me about the corruption of your pure happy mind. And I'm only half kidding. ;-) **  
  
***********************  
  
Enjolras nudged open the door to the upstairs room of Corinthe, pausing for a moment to hear the pounding rain outside in the rue de Mondètour. He was greeted by pale, lacy wisps of smoke and an odor that, for a more worldly man than he, could not have been mistaken. It was sickly sweet and very heavy, like a German cake, or a black secret, and Enjolras shook his head as he resisted his instinct to reel back away from that poisonous smoke. He slipped into the room quietly, and observed through the haze in the air that there were several others in the room already.  
  
Courfeyrac, Combeferre, and Jean Prouvaire were sitting at one of the tables; Joly and Laigle were at the neighboring one. None of them paid any attention to Enjolras's entrance.  
  
Laigle was lying in his chair, arms thrown carelessly about him, and Enjolras sensed the gaping, unearthly glaze over his dark eyes. He held a pipe, plain in appearance, dangling loosely from the fingers of one hand, and the sweet smoke drifted passively from the bowl of it. Beside him, Joly was limply strewn in his own chair, breathing heavily of the smoke that wreathed and filtered into his tawny auburn hair. Enjolras turned his gaze from them with a peculiar sense of foreboding.  
  
At the other table, Courfeyrac had a pipe similar to Laigle's poised delicately at his lips, giving a tiny sigh of anticipation before sucking a deep drag from the pipe. Prouvaire, with one hand whispering over Combeferre's thigh, took a draught of some dark, undulating liquid, his pale hair loose on his shoulders and trickling rebelliously over his forehead. Combeferre had what seemed to be faint glow about him, his hair wild and thorny, his back to Enjolras; he turned towards Courfeyrac and Enjolras saw the glint of something in his hand. The dull lamplight revealed a long blade, shapely and dazzling, which Combeferre was twirling gently with a loose wrist. Scrawling ghosts of messages in the smoke with its tip, Combeferre watched its dance with a sort of lilting fascination, and Enjolras felt choked by the feeling of suspense that permeated the air.  
  
At the first contact of steel with skin, Enjolras felt the release of his own breath in tandem with Combeferre's gasp. Courfeyrac's eyes, gleaming black through the gloom, were fixed on the philosopher's wrist, where the bright poppies had already begun to sprout, and he reached over, running one fingertip lightly over the stained skin. Combeferre hissed in something that seemed to be a frustrated desire, his body shuddering violently at that wisp of a touch, and Prouvaire's hand slid up his leg. Suddenly, Combeferre turned to glance straight at Enjolras, and the younger boy saw the deep gashes, skirted by what could have been smeared wine, that were engraved like clumsy script on his friend's ghostly pale forehead.  
  
Meanwhile, Joly had roused himself and was stumbling to Combeferre's side. He melted to the floor beside the boy's chair, clutching at the sleeve of Combeferre's unsullied arm. Enjolras saw a swift metallic gleam, and both of Combeferre's sleeves were suddenly flecked scarlet. His roommate began to writhe, sliding, jelly-like, from the chair into a heap on the floor beside Joly. Enjolras was frozen in horror as the others lifted Combeferre carefully, laying him on the tabletop, wine trickling in little rivulets down his wrists and off his fingertips to the floorboards.  
  
"Stigmata," Enjolras choked out, even as Courfeyrac raised one of Combeferre's oozing wrists to his lips, kissing the torn skin gently. The tip of his tongue flicked out, lightly wading through the wine. Enjolras bit his own lip until it bled and he crossed himself hurriedly. An odor deeper and infinitely more potent than that of the smoke attacked Enjolras's senses, and he felt himself reel with a fearful dizziness. He felt weak, and was aware of an intense mist of suffering hanging in the air with the smoke. He tried to cry out as Courfeyrac, drunk on the rich flow from Combeferre's wrists, placed his hands on Combeferre's chest, his fingernails digging into the young philosopher's flesh through the shirt fabric.  
  
Screaming without any sound emerging, Enjolras fell from the tableau, sweet smoke clogging his senses.  
  
He awoke to find his throat ragged from crying. 


	5. Frustration

I was roused from the gray flickering of light slumber by a deep sound, a hoarse, bitterly tortured cry ripping free of pure lips. I recognized that sound even before I was completely awake, and leapt from the bed to my feet, my head spinning. A few feet away, Enjolras's body convulsed on his bed, and his spine arched off the mattress so agonizingly that I thought it may snap. He was sobbing and gnashing his teeth with an animal insanity, and with such fervor that it seemed he could be possessed, and I grabbed hold of his shoulders, pinning him to the mattress. He thrashed against my hands, and I, being not nearly as strong as he was, flung myself onto the bed and straddled his stomach, throwing my full weight against the power in his body. He came awake with little warning, his eyes bursting open; the thrashing ceased and the trembling set in.  
  
"What happened?" I demanded. My wrists were throbbing beneath their bandages, and blood began to soak through the thin cloth. I released his shoulders and sat back on him. "Are you all right, Enjolras?"  
  
He stared at me, eyes very dark and very wild, without answering. He didn't seem conscious of either the tears racing down his cheeks or the fact that I was sitting on top of him. We stared at each other for a solid quarter of an hour without speaking, and he finally glanced at me as though seeing me for the first time.  
  
"Why are you sitting on me, Etienne?" he murmured, and the rusty wheeze in his throat convinced me that he could not breathe too well with me perched on his diaphragm.  
  
"I want to know what's upset you."  
  
"A dream," he said, and fresh tears caught his eyelashes. "I suppose it was a dream.it seemed so real. So awful."  
  
I slipped off of him and sat on the edge of his bed instead, ignoring the stabbing pains in my wrists and pulling him into my arms. I felt the light bristle of his unshaven cheek against my neck and the tears that spilled from his eyes onto my skin; he remained crying against me for a minute or two before finally dropping into a silence that seemed heavy with some emotion that I could neither recognize nor reconcile myself with. I almost thought he was asleep, until he began to whisper to me, his breath brushing my skin.  
  
"Remember when you told me you loved me? The absolute solitude that you were feeling at that moment, which forced you to say it?"  
  
I had not thought of it in this way before, and I realized suddenly that he was precisely accurate in his analysis of my psyche. I replied to his questions in a low tone: "Of course."  
  
"Would it bother you if I returned the gesture?" One of his hands had buried itself in the thick hair at the nape of my neck without my noticing, and the other was wound in the wisping fabric of my sleeve.  
  
"Of course not," I said, rubbing his back gently. "If it makes you feel better."  
  
He sounded as though he may have been making a weak attempt at a smile as he said it. "I love you. God, do I love you."  
  
"There then. Better?" I felt slightly faint, both from the leaking of my wrists and from the odd tone of his voice.  
  
He said nothing, but I jumped at the weight of his thigh against mine and the tickling of his fingers as they stroked the back of my neck. Before I could protest, he was crushing his lips against the soft skin at the base of my throat, one white hand creeping up underneath my shirt. In that moment, I could no more breathe than I could think, but I knew enough to nudge his hand out of my clothing.  
  
"Enjolras," I muttered. "Have a little propriety, Enjolras."  
  
The only response I received was his shifting position so that he could ease himself onto my lap. That was the final straw; I couldn't deny the persistent affection I'd entertained for him for years now, but I could certainly forestall the tragic conclusion that an encounter of this magnitude would eventually and inevitably come to. He had to be made to understand.  
  
"Enjolras, no," I said, slipping carefully out from underneath him. "Look." I calmly tore the bandage from my left wrist and my gaze drifted between that bloody sight and his unreadable face. "Do you understand this, child? This is not what you want to become involved with. Don't place yourself in a difficult situation; it'll only break your heart in the end."  
  
He looked at me without seeing me. "If you don't want me, just say so."  
  
"If I said that, would it make you desist?"  
  
He glanced at me then, and I couldn't help feeling a bit impressed by the anger that smoldered there. "So it's happened, then. You've made your choice, and the lancet's won." Before I could respond, he was on his feet, his unbuttoned shirt slipping off one shoulder. He strode across the room to the desk and reached for the jar of leeches, and I felt my heart clench in my chest. O God no, anything but that.He pulled away the leather covering and reached his hand in; I had to forcibly quell the sudden urge to retch. Deftly and quickly, he pulled from that jar a long, slender tool, coated in a fine film of slime, but perfectly recognizable as my lost lancet.  
  
I opened my mouth to comment, but he cut me off by flinging the instrument at my feet. It hit the floor with a dull clunk and bounced once or twice, sliding to a rest by the headboard of my bed.  
  
"There," he said, furious and perversely triumphant. "Take it, since you want it so badly. You burn for it, in every violated vein of your body, so take it, and find whatever pleasure you would in it."  
  
Clever son of a-He'd had it hidden there, in the one place he knew I'd never, ever dare to search. And now, he couldn't even understand that nothing on earth could induce me to so much as touch it, until it was properly sterilized. The leeches wriggled in their open jar, cackling at me; Enjolras pulled the leather back over the mouth of the jar and replaced it on the shelf. He crossed the room slowly, contemplatively almost, his mouth tightly drawn. I strode past him, suppressing an irrational impulse to slap him, and reached into the pocket of his frock coat where it hung by the door. I pulled out his handkerchief, starched and almost as flawlessly white as his hand, and picked up my lancet with it, then dropped the blade into the small basin we used for shaving. He watched me with a distinct scorn as I fastidiously cleaned the medical tool.  
  
"It's a sickness, Etienne," he said coldly, shaking his head. "Get some help." I avoided his gaze as he swept his overcoat from its spot beside the door and pulled it on, along with his boots. The door shook in its foundations when he slammed it on his way out. 


	6. Preoccupation

Mirth is a virtue.  
  
That occurred to me as I sat propped against the side of his bed, expertly twirling my lancet in one hand and laughing softly to myself. I paused in my lancet acrobatics to polish the blade with his handkerchief, and my laugh grew in depth and breadth until the low ceiling rang with that strange, sterile sound. To be honest, I have the sort of laugh that sounds more effective in the white glow of the dissection chamber than in the smoky back room of a tavern. It isn't that it's not a friendly laugh; it's simply somewhat toneless.  
  
I laughed until I felt that my lungs would collapse, upon which I stopped abruptly, silent tears of mirth still streaming down my face. I removed my spectacles to wipe away this laughter, then perched them back on the bridge of my nose. I could still see Enjolras's young face, carved of stone, as he upbraided me for my "sickness," and the petulant slam of the door. To think I had almost convinced myself that he had matured.  
  
When I first met Monsieur Enjolras, he was no more than fifteen or so, a child trembling like a lost puppy on the steps of the university library. I can't forget how he looked, huddled there with his schoolbooks as it began to rain; his hair was plastered against his forehead, looking like golden glaze, his face luminous in the mist. His eyes were so large that his face seemed unbalanced, out of proportion, but he was like a little doll, fragile and ethereal, left out in the rain by a child. I brought the lost doll home with me and showed him off to my friends the following day. We bought another mattress for the room and began splitting the rent then and there, and ever since, he'd been as much a part of me as my spectacles (or my lancet, for that matter).  
  
It hadn't been a month yet since I had first begun to understand how far we've come since that day. I had happened to walk into the room while he was dressing, and the proof that he was now a fully-grown man slapped me full in the face. I wondered how I'd managed to miss certain changes in his anatomy, not to mention in his height. I dimly recall some point when he'd been shorter than I, but without my noticing, he'd somehow surpassed me by more than half a foot. His hair color had deepened to such a honeyed tint that it seemed more like toffee in some lighting, but his eyes were much the same as they'd ever been: large, wet, kittenish blue. For the first time in my life, I could deeply appreciate the process of adolescence, that autumn of childhood.  
  
In short, the main change that I had become aware of is that Enjolras, once childishly pretty, is now unbearably handsome.  
  
He is also unbearably serious sometimes. That is something that had never been a feature of his childhood personality; he'd been reserved, and often shy, but never severe. I would not say that he has exactly become grim, or severe for that matter, but there is a very cold, very sharp edge to him that I had never noticed before.  
  
Of course, I was well aware of the odd anxiety that seemed to attend him from time to time, as though he was quivering with a sort of pent-up energy. Until tonight, he'd never made any honest efforts to release that sexual combustion that seemed to be scorching his insides black. I can't say I haven't been expecting some confrontation like that sooner or later, realizing that he's a restless young man, overwhelmed and hurt by his own untested virility, and I am a romantically world-weary philosopher, given to flights of fancy and short-lived affairs with cynical grisettes. He thinks he knows what he wants, but he hasn't the most vague of ideas what he's doing, or what he's asking.  
  
I watched the light trace the edge of the blade, still feeling slightly gleeful, like a schoolboy caught reading some unsuitably suggestive publication. With a precise care, I pressed the edge of the lancet blade against the unbandaged skin of my left wrist, testing its sharpness. Receiving a minute trickle of red as a result, I gave a heavy noise that may have been a cross between a snort and a groan, and proceeded to begin drawing a dancing arabesque across the scabs of older scars. His face danced before me, and the impossibly transparent skin of his pale wrists, which I felt that I was deflowering with each stroke of my lancet. Rationality briefly struggled to surface, spitting in my face and chastising me for my perversity, but the blade quickly and mercilessly ran it through. Because, when it comes down to it, rationality does become a little tiresome after a while. 


	7. Interlude II: Combeferre

**a/n: For those of you that care, my website has unfortunately had to relocate. If you want to know the new address, go to my author page here at ff.net—it's listed now as my homepage. Thanks for all your wonderful continuing support, everyone!**

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Combeferre started, waking abruptly, and found himself in some sort of room, propped up in a hard, high-backed chair. The first thing he noticed was the complete paralysis of his limbs—he tried to fold his arms over his chest, but realized they were already there, pinned inexplicably. He glanced down and understood.

He was tied into some sort of jacket, dusty white in color, which was knotted to the chair. His legs, too, were secured to the legs of the chair, and his hair was almost completely obscuring his vision. That was when he realized what had felt odd and bare against the back of his neck; his hair had been sloppily cropped to just above the shoulders and it was now spilling across his face in agitated, tangled waves.

He tossed his head, trying to clear his gaze, and in doing so noticed the man with thick spectacles standing in the corner of the room watching him intently. Combeferre was struck by a discordant feeling similar to that inspired by a particularly sour musical harmony, and he shattered the smothering silence by calling to the man.

"Who are you? Why am I here…and where _is_ here?"

The shadows shifted, disclosing the man entirely. He was small in stature, dark-haired and rather sallow of complexion; his spectacles were indeed thick, and they dominated his facial features. He approached Combeferre slowly, warily, as though nearing the cage of a wild animal. "Monsieur. How are you feeling?"

"Not as well as could be," Combeferre snapped. "You haven't answered any of my questions."

"My name's Doctor Jacobe." The man watched Combeferre curiously from a distance of two or three feet. "Be calm, monsieur. No one will hurt you."

"Why am I here?" Combeferre repeated, panic rising in his chest. "Where's Enjolras? I want to see Enjolras!"

The man stared at him for a moment or two, his eyes invisible behind the light glinting off his glasses. Combeferre suppressed a shudder.

"Please…" he said, his voice breaking. "I want Enjolras."

"Monsieur Enjolras has asked that you be limited to your constraints, for your own good," the doctor answered. "He will come to see you when he's able."

Combeferre's gaze drifted to the floor, and he froze, the joints in his hands twitching. Nothing, not the doctor, not the restraints, not the absence of his roommate, made such ineffable despair break over him as the small, almost indistinguishable blot on the stark white floor. To someone with vision as poor as Combeferre's, that blot should have seemed inconsequential, but a primal fear in Combeferre grabbed him by the throat when he realized by some deeply ingrained instinct that that 'blot' was a leech.

The tiny creature squirmed its way across the floor with an agonizing stealth and slowness, and Combeferre bit back a cry when he saw the second leech, then the third, until the floor was suddenly coming to life beneath his feet. The doctor showed no sign of panic or dread, but just continued to stare blankly at an increasingly agitated Combeferre, even as the plague of leeches slimed their way over his boots on their crusade towards the chair.

"God help me!" Combeferre cried as the creatures began climbing the legs of his chair with slow, maddening persistence. "Stop! Oh, somebody, help me!" He jerked against his bonds with the desperation of a beast in a trap.

Presently, Enjolras's tall silhouette materialized in the doorway; only the glitter of his eyes and something clutched in his hand was visible through the shadow. Combeferre's eyes were wild as he babbled terrified gibberish at his roommate: "Enjol—Oh, thank God—help--! Don't let them—I'll do anything! Don't—" He broke off in tears as Enjolras stepped forward, the heels of his boots clicking eerily on the floor. The younger boy had a blade gripped in one hand, and through his panic, Combeferre recognized the homely but utilitarian shape of a surgeon's lancet. Enjolras wore a queer expression on his face, something of a twisting of his full lips, accompanied by a narrowing of his eyes and a sort of tightening in his facial muscles, particularly at the cheekbones. Combeferre had only observed that expression once before—it had been the look on the face of a grisette he'd had once. She'd been a bitter, fiery girl that Courfeyrac had been dabbling about with, and one night Combeferre had accompanied them back to Courfeyrac's flat for a drink, or two or three. In the midst of the foggy memories of that night, Combeferre recalled various snippets of blinding ecstasy: the sweat-sleek smoothness of Courfeyrac's chest, the abnormal length of the girl's tongue, the way Combeferre had begged her to cut him with a sliver of the broken bottle's green glass. Her expression, that strained combination of innocence and dangerous sensuality, was mirrored beautifully on Enjolras's face now.

Combeferre was in spasms of shameless fear, thrashing in his chair as Enjolras came to stand before him. The leeches were crawling over the trapped young man's body, beneath the white jacket, leaving trails of slime over the folded skin of his doubled-up stomach. Enjolras stared down at him, and his expression became more of a smile than anything else, a dark, affected smile that warped the gleam of his eyes. He shifted the lancet from his left hand to his right, and reached down, pressing the flat of the blade against Combeferre's temple. Combeferre was forced to freeze, lest the blade dig into him, and Enjolras's smile widened fearsomely. The younger man used the blade tip to brush a harried curl from Combeferre's forehead with a gentleness that brought to Combeferre's mind images of childhood and of lovers past, and Enjolras knelt by his side, leaning over to whisper in his ear.

"Can't you see that you can't have everything, Etienne? I would have given you the earth and sky, but you'd rather have that elusive twitch of danger." His eyes were dark, almost fey, and focused on the doctor, who'd retired to his gloomy corner again. A flick of his wrist, and the tip of the blade kissed Combeferre's forehead, causing him to jump, more out of shock than pain. "You ought to choose me, you know."

The dark-haired young man shivered, his head spinning as the leeches sucked happily on his skin. "_Petit ami_, I wouldn't hurt you."

"And I wouldn't hurt you." The pressure of the flat of the lancet against his skin was steadily growing, and Combeferre felt one of the leeches on his neck shift position to catch some of the blood trickling down the side of his face. Enjolras turned abruptly to the doctor, giving him some sharp command that Combeferre did not catch, and the doctor slipped out the door. The sound of the bolt falling back into place behind him sounded to Combeferre like his heart plunging to his feet in despair.

"Tell him there must be some mistake, Marcelin," the philosopher urged, trying to keep a yell from creeping up into his voice. "There's nothing wrong with me; I shouldn't be here."

Enjolras smiled down at him with the patience reserved for small children and dumb animals. "You're a sick man, Etienne. This is where they bring sick men."

Combeferre choked on his indignation. "Sick...!"

"I told you that you were, didn't I?" Enjolras said with the same patronizing smile. "But you couldn't stop...you didn't want to stop. And now the only friends you have left are the only ones who understand you--the leeches."

"No!" Combeferre shouted until he was hoarse, but Enjolras had already turned from him and left him alone in the room. "Enjolras! God! Anybody!"

The swelling laughter of the fattened leeches strangled his senses and the shadow rushed up to meet him.

He awoke in a cold sweat and a mess of dried blood, still leaning against the bed of a roommate who was nowhere to be seen. The sun was just peeking through the familiarly filthy windowpane, glinting off the untouched jar on the shelf.


	8. An Encounter

It was nearing noon by the time I could bring myself to leave the room. I was suffering acutely from a hangover of sorts, and try as I may, I couldn't banish the thought of Enjolras from my throbbing brain. In truth, I was worried about him, but that was a fairly frequent occurrence, considering the trouble the boy was capable of involving himself in; how odd that, for once, all of it was my fault and not his.

The day had begun with weak sunlight, but by afternoon, it was drizzling steadily, and was generally miserable in atmosphere. I strode through the narrow alley behind our apartment building, headed towards the Latin Quarter and dodging murky puddles. I was too busy ducking the wispy fingers of fog trying to muss my hair to notice when a hand clapped me on the shoulder; when my delayed reaction kicked in, I must have leapt about ten feet from the ground.

"What do you want?" I yelped, ashamed almost instantaneously at the undeniable squeak in my voice.

"I was hoping you could tell me," Enjolras answered quietly.

"Don't scare me like that," I admonished him, trying not to expose my relief at his safety. "I thought you were a hoodlum."

He shook the hair from his eyes like an impatient stallion. "You're really quite foolish sometimes, Etienne." He took me by the hand, leading me through the mist, and I pulled against his touch, our hands slippery from the rain.

"What do you want?" I repeated. "Enjolras, contrary to what you may think, accosting then insulting me in an alleyway isn't likely to win my favor."

"I never had your favor anyway," he snorted. "I'm too young, is that it? Too young, too idealistic, too innocent, and too ordinary." While speaking, he never once slowed his pace, and I found myself half-jogging to keep up with his lanky stride.

"Enjolras, don't do that," I told him, biting my tongue against the retort that bubbled to my lips. "You always make it seem like I'm some sort of celibate, self-slicing monster. I think you must believe I'm a prude, or impotent, or something, eh?"

He began to laugh, most unexpectedly, but it rang condescendingly. "You haven't given me any reason to think otherwise."

"Is that a challenge?" I asked, surprised at the suavity of his taunting. Actually, until lately, I had thought him completely devoid of shrewdness.

He released my hand, turning his head to peer at me through the curtain of foggy rain. "Is it, 'Tienne? And would it matter if it was? You're beneath taking petty dares, are you not?"

I scowled a little. "I'm human, and I take my pleasure as it comes, but only if it doesn't lead to complicated feelings. If you're under the impression that I rejected you out of frigidity, you're much mistaken." I followed behind him as he began to walk again. "You must try to understand how much I love you, but you're handsome and charismatic enough to not have to wait for my resolve to wear down. You deserve someone who can do something for you, and if you're looking for a way to squander your virginity, well, go to Musain some night and proposition Les Amis; I'm sure you'll find no lack of takers."

He turned on me then, and made as if to hit me, but as I cringed, awaiting the blow, it never came. He seemed to think better of it, and clenched his fist in restrained rage. "How dare you? I'm not some two-penny whore, and you're insufferably dense to think that what I feel for you is some sort of elaborate groin-ache! I have two functioning hands; I can pleasure myself well enough if it comes to that."

I bit my lip to keep from chuckling aloud; the thought of Enjolras doing something so desperate was laughable, at best. He noted my smirk, and flushed deeply; it was the last thing I saw before the back of his hand connected sharply with my face. The force of the blow almost knocked me clear off my feet, and I stumbled away from him with an inarticulate cry, rubbing my cheek.

"What in God's name--!" I yelled at him. It was the first time I could remember raising my voice above speaking volume at him. When he grabbed me by the lapels of my overcoat, with the strength to nearly lift me from the pavement, I realized how little I was in control, and how dangerously intriguing that concept was.

"Why do you have to laugh at me? Does it make you feel better?" His lip was twisted, pearl-white teeth exposed in a snarl worthy of a mastiff. "Are you sadistic as well as m--?"

Before he could get it out, I was protesting. "Now, that's not fair! How can you come out with something in reference to your nonexistent masturbation habits and expect me to keep a straight face?"

"--masochistic?" He finished doggedly over my words, then stopped a moment to consider what I'd said. "Combeferre, you really are a fool."

I shoved at his hands, which had slackened their grip on me. "What's wrong with you? Can't you say anything besides 'Combeferre, you're a fool'?" I glanced up at his face, which had grown thoughtful, his long eyelashes hesitating over the clear eyes, staring right through me.

"I don't know what's wrong with me," he said with a bemused, absent expression, suddenly deadly calm, and although he answered the question, he didn't appear to be responding to me at all. "I'm mad, I think. I've loved you since I was a child, even before the onset of puberty, long before I would have even known what it is to be someone's lover. It's strange"--and here, he gave a little laugh, his fists, balled in the thick wool of my coat, relaxing into long, lithe fingers resting carefully on my chest--"it's strange, but several years ago, I thought the entire universe was in perfect, stunning tandem if you only deigned to hold my hand as we walked down the street, or kiss my forehead before we went to bed, or tell me one of those sweet, sinister stories from the East."

I ducked my head, letting the raindrops tickle the nape of my neck. I didn't want to hear this; the wind was tearing into me from the north, and he was taking me back to a time that I didn't care much to remember. That was a time I could very easily allow myself to forget, an abysmal time when, on any given night when I wasn't sobbing in a confessional booth, I was lying feverish in my bed, stroking furiously, four feet away from a little boy that I would have sold my soul to have, just for one night. Damn him, now he was forcing me to dredge it up, and slowly, blurred images returned to me. It was then--yes, now I remember--that I realized what a godsend my lancet truly was, how it took so very little to ease the aching in my veins, the fierce fire tingling in my skin, if only I knew where to look for the relief.

His hands remained stroking my coat gently, gazing at some vague point behind my head, and he lapsed into the kind of pensive silence that I had come to expect from him. The wind tugged insistently on my coattails again, urging me to seek shelter, but it was too late: I was mired in the past, and I suddenly reflected that it was a shame that he hadn't grown up to be plain. It would have made everything so much easier to bear.

I turned away from him, taking him by the shoulder and steering him in the general direction of the Latin Quarter. He did not, could not speak, his eyes cast to his feet, and I bit my lip to stop from obsessing over the memories that were presently pounding my mind in waves. I wasn't surprised when he stopped me at the mouth of the alleyway and touched his lips to mine; his eyes were dripping pathos, and I sighed as my wrists began to itch again beneath their bandages, hidden in my shirtsleeves.

"Child, child." I brushed my fingertip across his cheek, doing my damnedest at skirting my emotions. "How many times have I told you to keep up on your shaving?"

He quirked a smile. "I spent last night wandering down near the Tuileries. Perhaps you'd rather I'd shaved in the fountains...?"

I touched his face, running fingers over his neck, and muttered, "Never you mind. You needn't shave at all; it makes you all the more irresistible."

His hair was damp from the rain, clumped like wet straw, but as I've already said, Enjolras is the kind of man who invariably appears straight-laced in attitude and neat in appearance, and consequently, has this potent sexuality about him when he's a little disheveled. Beneath his coat, his shirt gaped open, just as it had been when I'd last seen him; the rainwater on his chest gave his body the look of silk, molded smoothly into some gently sloping hint of virginity, like the petal of a champagne-colored rose. I rested my forehead against this silk, unable to shake the feeling that I was dirtying it in the process. For one sweeping moment, in the coolness of his skin, I felt that we had found our way back to the beginning, that there was no such invention as a lancet, that he was the object of my pure affection, unsullied by profane desire, that we were yet children in spirit.

And then I understood. He would never know me, nor I him, because we lived like two paths that run side-by-side, never crossing, never converging. He thought to jump his course and try to comprehend my motives by tripping my path, but he would never _be_ me. He'd never sit there in _my_ seat in the dissection laboratory, in _my_ suit and apron, wielding _my_ lancet and _my_ forceps, contemplating those things with _my_ brain. He'd never see the world through _my_ spectacles and, in addition, he could not understand why he could not see things just as well without them. I had rarely seen Enjolras terrified before, but I sensed instinctively the fear that welled up inside him when he thought about how little he knew of my soul.

His hand ventured from my waist to my hip just then, recalling me from my reveries as he gave me a little nudge that seemed to ask me why we were standing stupidly in the rain. I shot him a wan smile, noting his impatience and calmly attributing it to his youth. He was making a fierce attempt to restrain his impulses, and I almost laughed at him again, but thought that that was probably unwise, considering his apparent sensitivity to mockery. I shook out my hair a bit, as the length of it matted down against my neck, and he followed me passively as I turned towards Musain once more. Within two blocks, we met Courfeyrac coming from the opposite direction in the company of Jehan and Joly, and they fell into step with us.


	9. Complication

Courfeyrac, laughing, threw an arm about Enjolras's shoulders and the other around me, while Joly and Jehan remained engaged in a teasing conversation about some girl or other who'd caught Prouvaire's attention. Listening a bit more closely, I realized that they were, in fact, discussing a man.

"Is he handsome?" Joly was pressing voraciously as they drew abreast of us. He had an accent corresponding to that of a man with a severe head cold. "Come on, Jehan, you're playing it for all it's worth!"

The young poet sent me a pleading look, his cheeks pink. "I'm not being contrary, I promise you. I just...what does it matter, Joly? Why do you care to know?"

"Because!" my fellow medical student insisted. "No one else has any news as interesting."

I reflected that _I_ would certainly be able to tell them a thing or two that would scare them.

Enjolras was making a valiant attempt to shrug off Courfeyrac's arm, but I rested comfortably in the crook of that elbow; after all, I can't say I was a complete stranger to Courfeyrac's body. My roommate, however, generally prefers not to be touched; if he is interested in a physical show of affection, he is bound to approach you sooner or later, but he is loathe to be approached himself.

"Prouvaire, you can't hold out forever," Courfeyrac teased, winking at me from underneath thick black eyebrows. "Rest assured that we _will_ uncover the details, even if we have to trail you all over the city."

Jehan approached my right side, presumably to put some space between himself and Joly. He was quivering a little, and I offered him a smile to put him at his ease; his feminine nose crinkled in acute embarrassment.

"I...well, yes, I suppose he is handsome," he said finally. "Quite handsome," he added after some blushing thought, giving me an oblique glance. Joly laughed softly, nasally.

"Prouvaire, when can we meet him?" He dabbed uselessly at his stuffed nose with his handkerchief. Beside him, Enjolras noticeably stiffened as Courfeyrac casually slid his hand over my roommate's exposed chest. Joly either missed the tightening of Enjolras's facial muscles, or else chose to ignore it; after all, _he_ wasn't Courfeyrac's keeper. Was it his responsibility if our black-haired friend couldn't keep his hands to himself?

A twinge of what could have just as easily been lust as jealousy gripped me, and I barely heard Prouvaire's response: "...well, perhaps soon. Perhaps you already know him…" He was blushing still, which made me feel not so out-of-place with my own flushed visage.

"Know him?" I said distractedly, to chase away the fantasies of Courfeyrac and Enjolras and lancets. "Somebody we know?"

The poet smiled, the skin crinkling up around his large eyes, almost obscuring them. "Know him?" he repeated with an almost mocking tone, then added mysteriously, "I should say." 

"O Go-o-o-o-od!" Courfeyrac drawled out with a bark of laughter. "God, Prouvaire, you're going to kill Joly with the suspense, if his pneumonia doesn't get to him first. Who could this charming prince of yours be this time? Let's see..." He pretended to ponder it deeply, and Enjolras took full advantage of his distraction, slipping out from underneath his arm. "Is it me?"

"You?" Jehan laughed breathlessly. "'Me,' he says? No, _mon cher_, not likely." He accompanied this dismissal with a gesture of his hand that caused the frothy lace at his cuff to float for a moment, suspended on the damp breeze.

I smiled, sensing Enjolras's presence as he walked near my left shoulder, behind Courfeyrac, who seemed playfully miffed at Jehan's words. "Is it Arzak?" I asked.

"The Basque? No."

"Papineau?" Joly had come up behind Prouvaire, giving a little tug on his ponytail. "He writes poetry, you know."

"Papineau? Ugh," Jehan exclaimed emphatically. "He treats women most shamefully, you know. Drools all over them, pets their sacred hands with such roughness, you'd think him more beast than man."

"Beast indeed," leered Courfeyrac. "I suppose we can rule out Bahorel, then."

He mounted the stairs leading from the little rue des Grès up to the back room, and we followed one by one, as the stairs were somewhat rickety and altogether untrustworthy. Courfeyrac, who was well acquainted with Musain's proprietor (or rather, with the proprietor's buxom daughter), produced a small key, with which he unlocked the door and held it open for us, bowing deeply with the stiff gravity of a pretentious porter.

The back room of Musain was a dingy affair, barely kept in order by a frumpy serving girl by the name of Louison, and that day was no exception. The chairs, stacked on stained tables, with the shadows dancing on them, gave the impression of an ancient fey forest, or a dungeon, or something else similarly sinister. Joly lit one of the lamps, dispelling the dream, and I expected to see the sprites and hobgoblins scurrying back to their holes. The pungent, comforting smell of burning oil filled the room as the door fell closed behind Courfeyrac and the other lamps were lit.

Courfeyrac, Enjolras, and I pulled the chairs down from the tabletops, and all five of us gathered our chairs around the center table, which was rectangular in shape (it was usually used for dominoes or card-playing). After disposing of his overcoat, frock coat, and hat, throwing them carelessly on a neighboring tabletop, Courfeyrac stretched out languidly in one of the chairs. He reached into his fob, pulling out not a pocketwatch, but one of those foreign _cigaritos_, which he proceeded to light and puff on contentedly. Enjolras, cringing at the heavy odor of the smoke, sat across the table from Courfeyrac, and I settled between them.

"I can't speak of it," Prouvaire said finally, shattering the silence. He was gazing through me, rather than at me, from across the table. "I cannot. It's a foolish matter, at any rate...I'm well aware that he doesn't feel the same way, and there isn't any point in pursuing something that is fruitless."

"Sweet Jesus, is this the Jehan we know?" Courfeyrac shook his head, flourishing the hand holding the _cigarito_. "The idealist, the insufferably optimistic _poet_? Surely he finds some redeeming quality in you."

I glanced across at Jehan; he was looking back at me, and his face had gone pale. "We are friends, he and I. It's only natural that he should think nothing else of it." I met his earth-brown eyes, which had grown muddy from tears, and I felt that I was drowning in his melancholy. I saw his thoughts suddenly, and they filled me with a fear that had remained unrecognized until now; indeed, I had never actually acknowledged the possibility...

"As for redeeming qualities," he continued, ducking his head, "they probably exist, but I cannot see them."

"But he can," I said abruptly, and they all turned to stare at me. Prouvaire's eyes were very large, and I saw him teetering on the brink between tears and laughter. I amended myself quickly. "What I mean is, he can surely see them, Prouvaire. If he can't, then he's a fool, and you ought to forget about him."

Enjolras was watching me through narrowed eyes, his keen gaze pricking my cheek. I knew that he was asking me silently for an explanation, but I could not offer him one. My wrists were tingling unbearably.

Prouvaire began to laugh, very softly, his voice rusty and cracking, and that desperate sound filled me with pity. "Does he love me, Combeferre? Can you tell me that?"

Courfeyrac was staring at the tabletop, seemingly thoughtful, but both Joly and Enjolras were gazing between us, caught up in the conversation that they understood nothing of.

"He can't love you," I answered slowly, and I noticed an unconscious tension shift suddenly off of Enjolras's shoulders. "I'm sorry."


	10. Explanations

We walked in silence, Prouvaire and I, drawn into the darkness striped by lamplight. I had suggested that we take a walk, leaving the other three behind in Musain. My last image of Enjolras had been his eyes gleaming through Courfeyrac's thick smoke, every twitch of his lips seeming to project his annoyance at my abandoning him to that hazy, apathetic company. If the situation with Jehan had not been so desperate, I would not have left Enjolras like that.

"Look out for the puddles." The soft voice drew me out of my thoughts. I turned to glance at Prouvaire, who was watching me out of the corner of his eye. "The mud puddles. In the street. Be careful."

I avoided the offending puddle carefully, sneaking a glance at him. He was younger than I but older than Enjolras, and quite different from both of us. In regards to appearance, he was childlike and breakable, with a thin frame, sloping shoulders like a girl, and hair the color of wet sand. He had the manner of a puppy that has never been kicked before, but fears it nonetheless.

"Are you sleeping with Enjolras?" His voice once again broke my stupor, tremulous and embarrassed in its question.

I schooled my countenance, proud at my ability to keep the surprise from showing. "No," I answered, then added carefully, "He's a virgin."

"Oh." He averted his eyes, chewing on his lip, seemingly unable to discern whether I meant this addendum as an explanation of my response.

"He wants something from me," I said, "but I don't think he knows what that something might be any more than I do."

"Are you going to sleep with him?" he asked, ashamed at the brazenness of his own line of questioning.

I smiled tiredly. "Probably."

"Oh," he said again. He was crying. "Couldn't you sleep with me instead?" It was odd, this matter-of-fact question, and him asking it as though it was nothing more than a request to borrow my handkerchief.

"I don't think that would be good for anyone involved," I said gently. "Sooner or later, you'd have to let me go."

"But even one night with you would be--"

"And would that solve anything?" I pressed. "He's not willing to share my favor."

"Are _you_ willing to share it?" There was a maturity in the lines of his face that I had previously thought to be mere poetic melancholy.

I thrust my hands into my pockets, a vague sense of irritation tickling my brain. "Why are you so insistent? What could you possibly see in me to make me worth so much trouble? I am no witless peasant, but I'm not so wonderful as to make me subject of your desire and misery."

"You're perfect," he answered simply, but that reply rankled me further, more than I could conceivably admit.

"I'm not even near to perfection. I have sins on my head that would make you blanch for shame, that would convince your young mind that I am the Devil himself." I had not meant for the words to sound as sharp as they did.

His brows furrowed. "You could never convince me of that, Etienne. I know you're no sinner."

"Not only am I a sinner, I'm a sick sinner!" I exclaimed heatedly, glancing away from him and kicking at one of the puddles in the street.

"But you're not sick!" He laughed nervously, tugging at the lapel of his jacket.

Something in me snapped, and I grabbed hold of his arm suddenly, rolling up my sleeve with my other hand. "See this?" I practically shoved my bare wrist beneath his nose. It was a rather gruesome sight, sallow skin laced by scars and still covered in dried blood, and he jerked away from it in cringing horror.

"Combeferre--!"

"That's what it means to be sick. It has nothing to do with Joly, or having a tongue of unusual color, or catching a fever." He was cowering, and I took pity on him and rolled my sleeve back into place again. "Now, Jehan...please, no more on this. I'm not the right one for you. I would frighten you, _petit_, and I'd rather die than do such a thing."

"A bit late to consider that, don't you think?" he mumbled, his eyes round. He looked weak, and I overmastered my frustration enough to slip an arm around his waist to keep him from falling. He pushed at me feebly, squeaking out some agitated protests, but I clung tightly to him until he managed to calm himself.

"Jehan, don't ask me any questions about it." I released him at last, shaking my head. "Don't even allow yourself to wonder about it. Just accept it as it is, and please don't let's argue about this infatuation business."

"Infatuation..." He was terrified of me, I could see it.

"I suppose I've cured you of that, hm?" I couldn't help but feel a bit satisfied with myself for that small triumph. "Don't worry, Jehan, it's for the best."

He turned abruptly on his heel, jogging back the way we'd come from. I stared after him over my shoulder, watching his slender shadow as it chased him down the lonely street.


	11. Resignation

**a/n: Oh no! Enjolras sex! *gasp* ;-)

****************************************

"He didn't touch you, did he?"

It was the first thing Enjolras had said to me since we'd arrived back at our room, each of us lost in our own thoughts. He was pulling off his boots as he murmured it, sitting on the edge of his bed and ignoring the dried blood on the floor beneath his feet.

I lit the desk lamp, shuffling through the mess of papers stuffed in my medical textbooks. "Of course not."

He leaned back on his bed, stretching his long legs; his hair was spilling around his face, liquid amber in the lamplight. As I found the paper I was searching for and sat down in the desk chair with it, he addressed me without looking at me. "He didn't try anything?"

"Don't give yourself away," I admonished him, scanning the words on the page. "You sound like a jealous schoolboy."

He sniffed, shooting me a glare that I caught out of the corner of my eye. "That's all you take me for anyway, so why shouldn't I play the part for you?"

"Are you still harping on that?" I turned to him finally, tossing the paper back into the chaos of the desk and pulling off my frock coat in one irritated movement. "You act so juvenile sometimes that I wonder whether you really are seventeen, or whether you're still just a spoilt child in short pants."

He sat up a bit, anger flashing in his eyes. "What did you say to him? Are you going to take him as a lover, eh? Did he seduce you with verse, convince you to share your nights with him?"

"Learn to control your tongue, child." I stood, pushing back my chair with a rough indignation. 

"'To live in the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,'" he quoted sharply from _Hamlet_, his eyes very large and very dark. "'Stew'd in corruption--'"

"Stop it!" I yelled at him, advancing on the bed with a righteous fury at this twisting of literature.

"'Honeying and making love over the nasty st--!'" I leapt on him, cuffing him so soundly that he broke off mid-line with a sort of cry, shoving at me. "Don't you hit me, Etienne!"

I grabbed his wrists with a strength that surprised both of us, pinning him down and leaning over him in an attempt to catch my breath. "Don't spoil good verse, you churlish brute." He struggled out from underneath me, panting and flushed with the effort to control himself, his cheeks wet with angry tears. I turned away from him, my fury melting to tired annoyance as I listened to the heaving rhythm of his breathing. 

He gasped out a curse at my back, then demanded, "Are you staying with me or not? Are you my roommate or are you his muse?"

I swallowed my brusque reply and finally said weakly, "I don't love him."

"What has love ever had to do with anything?" He slipped unconsciously into his regional accent, and I jumped as he touched my shoulder. I didn't answer, and it was something like ten minutes before he added haltingly, "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," I said, guilt creeping into my voice. "Somebody had to say it sooner or later."

"No, I mean about badgering you. It's your choice...you don't need to feel compelled to stay if you don't want to."

I half-turned towards him, noting that he had moved closer and was leaning against my back. "Enjolras, I'm happy here, with you. That is, I am when we're not arguing, or giving each other bruises, or pretending not to care about each other. It shouldn't be this hard to co-exist in the same room."

I felt the rise and fall of his chest as he sighed deeply. "But we're not exactly co-existing, are we. We're trying to do more, be more, feel something that equates to more than acquaintance, and it's only causing problems."

I glanced across the room, and the gleaming jar on the shelf caught my eye. The leeches were eerily silent, watching the silly human melodramas unfold beneath them with a jaded eye. I could not meet their gaze, and I glanced away, staring pointedly at anything but the jar. "I wish they would leave me alone," I muttered to myself.

"Who?" I had almost forgotten his presence, and his breath against my cheek, his whisper brushing my ear startled me.

"Nobody," I said quickly, and tried to ignore the length of his body, pressed against the back of mine from shoulder to hip. I could feel the ruthless blood cutting its way through his veins, throbbing to the very core of his body, and I could almost taste him, him and that wine spilling through him. My hand trembled, grasping mechanically at thin air in search of the familiar grip of a lancet handle. He rested his chin on my shoulder, and I sensed the smile twisting his lips.

"Have you ever wanted me, Etienne?"

I clenched that hand into a fist to stop its twitching. "Yes."

"Dreamed about me?"

"Yes."

His smile melted, and I smelled his fear. "I've dreamed about you too."

I glanced at him, adjusting my spectacles disinterestedly. "Oh?"

He shook his head, murmuring, "It wasn't that sort of dream." His hands were cold against mine.

"Do you want to talk about it?" I asked solicitously.

"No." His hands moved from mine and undid my cravat meticulously. "I don't want to talk at all."

I shuddered at the very thought of his hands on my body, of his white fingertips touching my grotesquely scarred arms, but I gritted my teeth and permitted him to dispose of my cravat, and my waistcoat after it. He pushed himself into a kneeling position behind me, and I could feel his trousers pulled taut over his lithe body, brushing roughly over my lower back; I closed my eyes in shame, willing myself not to think about what it was I was allowing him to do.

"Is this necessary?" I asked him softly as he unbuttoned my shirt.

He said nothing, only hid his profile gently against my neck. His greedy fingers were devouring my bared chest, inch by inch.

"Well," I said finally, with a resigned note in my voice, "if it is, then let's get it over with."


	12. Aftermath

"What time is it?"

I glanced up from my shaving, the long, naked blade hovering in mid-air. He was blinking at me blearily from the bed, but as his eyes focused, his expression suddenly exploded in fear. Before I could say a word, he had leapt from the bed and was crushing me between his body and the wall, tearing the razor blade from my hand. "Combeferre! Stop!"

"What's wrong with you?!" I sputtered as he retreated to the other side of the room with my blade as his hostage. His skin gleamed ivory in the early light filtering through the windowpane, and as affected as I was by his beauty, I couldn't help but be exasperated by his irrational behavior. "Can I have my razor back now?"

He shook his head slowly. "So that you can hurt yourself further? I think not."

I stared blankly at him, until suddenly, it hit me. I began to laugh, softly at first, then more and more broadly, until that oddly empty laugh overwhelmed me. Removing my spectacles to wipe the tears from my eyes, I told him breathlessly, "I'm shaving, idiot, not cutting."

He glanced from me to the razor and back, quickly, as though he was afraid I might make a lunge at him and wrench the thing from his hand. "Are you?"

"Of course, you silly boy!" I bit back another wave of laughter, afraid of seriously offending him. "May I continue doing just that?"

Grudgingly, his cheeks pink, he handed it back to me, and I patted his shoulder as he went back to sit on the bed.

"Don't worry," I said kindly, "it's an honest mistake."

"Shut up," he replied, screwing up his face into a scowl to hide his embarrassment. Annoyed by his own naked body, he slipped back beneath the blankets, burying his blushing face in the pillow.

"How did you sleep?" I asked, mercifully changing the subject.

One blue eye peered at me from above the surface of the pillow. "Like a babe. And you?"

I scraped the blade delicately over my cheek. "Fitfully."

"I'm sorry. Did I toss and turn and keep you awake?"

"No," I murmured, trying to concentrate on the task at hand. "I just couldn't get to sleep. I couldn't stop thinking."

"Yes, you never do stop thinking, do you?" He raised his head, giving me an affectionate look.

"It's a blessing and a bane," I answered matter-of-factly. There was silence for a few moments, which weighed on me, until I smashed it desperately. "Enjolras?"

"Hm?" He propped himself up on his elbows, his hair tousled.

I gazed at his reflection in the mirror. "Don't ever ask me to do that again."

"Do what?"

"You know," I said quietly.

"Oh." He ran his fingers through his hair. "You didn't enjoy it, then."

"That's not the issue." He watched me as I rinsed the remaining soap from my face in the basin. "I'm only human, Enjolras. No red-blooded Frenchman could spend the night with you and feel unmoved...I mean"--I faltered, a little abashed--"I mean, you're very attractive. And very...passionate."

"Is my dear philosopher embarrassed?" He laughed softly. "You're turning red, 'Tienne."

I continued doggedly over his teasing. "The point is that if it continues, it'll ruin whatever relationship we may have, and I can't let that happen."

Staring at me, his eyes boring into my back, he finally shrugged, saying nonchalantly, "Anything you want, _mon ami_. But--thank you."

"For what?" 

"For everything," he replied, rising slowly and searching for his trousers among the clothing dumped haphazardly on our floor.

I made a brave attempt at brushing the tangled mess that was my hair. "You're welcome."

We completed our _toilette_ in silence, and descended the stairs of the building. Our landlady, Madame Lacour, met us at the foot of the stairs with a letter that had arrived for Enjolras. He opened it with an agonizingly slow patience as we strolled in the general direction of the Latin Quarter, and his eyes flicked swiftly over the neat handwriting. At some length, he folded it back up calmly and replaced it in its envelope.

"What's wrong?" I asked, knowing every nuance of his moods and understanding the pained haughtiness with which he was carrying himself now.

He pursed his lips and replied with a clipped accent. "My parents have just informed me that I am to expect a visit soon."

"So?"

He could not meet my gaze. "It seems they'll be bringing with them a girl they wish to betroth me to."

"Who?" I regarded him gravely.

"Does it matter?" His voice faltered a little on the last word, and I slipped my hand into his, squeezing gently. "Those girls they pick are all the same. They look the same, they act the same, they may as well be the same."

We found ourselves before the Café Musain, and entered with the gravity of a funeral parade. Treading the tired floorboards of the long hall leading to our back room, he followed me passively, pensively. The first thing I noticed about the room upon pulling the door open on its creaking hinges was the fact that Louison had obviously not bothered with cleaning it from last evening's visit. Empty bottles and dominoes littered the rectangular table, and several _cigarito_ butts lay crushed on the floor.

The second thing I noticed, before Enjolras even entered, was the crumpled human figure in the corner of the room, dumped on the floor and looking about as lifeless as the _cigarito_ remnants.

"Good God!" The cry sprang to my lips, and I hurried across the darkened room as Enjolras fumbled for the lamp and matches. I rolled the body over carefully, to find myself face-to-face with Jean Prouvaire. His pallor was chalky, his eyes closed, and I took his pulse, my medical instinct quickly surfacing. His heartbeat was steady but somewhat faint, and I eased him into a sitting position, giving his body a cursory glance to check for wounds. Enjolras knelt beside me, holding the lamp, and I glanced up at him swiftly before further examining Jehan. His expression was not exactly what I would call sympathetic.

"What's wrong with him?" he asked, and I cringed at how cold his tone was. "Is he dead?"

"No, of course he isn't!" I answered, somewhat heatedly. "If I had to make a guess, I would say absinthe-induced unconsciousness."

"Oh." Enjolras set the lamp on the table behind us, and settled himself cross-legged on the floor nearby, leaning against the wall. I called for Louison, and had her fetch me some cold water. Enjolras watched me serenely as I cradled Jehan, stroking the hair lying loose on his shoulders. It took me a few moments to realize that my roommate was trembling violently.

"What's the matter?" I asked him without glancing up from Prouvaire.

"Nothing." He closed his eyes and shook his head. "Nothing...just that--I dreamed this once, that he--and the absinthe--and--" He broke off abruptly, hanging his head.

I peered at him from over the rims of my glasses. "He'll be all right, Enjolras, it's nothing to worry about."

"I'm not worried for him," he answered bluntly. "If he's foolish enough to drink himself to death's doorstep, I can't be expected to waste my concern on him."

"It's not his fault," I told him. "It's mine."

"What do you mean?"

Before I could answer, Louison burst in with the water and a rag. She remained hovering uncertainly at the edges of the room as I calmly disposed of the rag and dumped the bowl of water over Prouvaire's face. He awoke with a gasp, coughing water and curling instinctively into a fetal position. I pulled him to my chest, rocking him gently and murmuring to him snatches of whichever sonnets I could recall at the moment, in an attempt to soothe him. His slender body quivered under my hands, and his hid his face against my chest, perhaps unaware of where he was and whom he was with.

"Well...?" Enjolras raised one eyebrow marginally, as if to inquire after Jehan's fitness.

The boy in my arms glanced up immediately, locking his gaze with Enjolras's. My roommate seemed a bit perturbed by whatever expression must have been in Prouvaire's eyes, but he did not look away. He cleared his throat placidly and said again, "Well?"

"Are you all right, Jehan?" I clarified quietly.

Drenched thoroughly and near to convulsions, he turned to face me, the tip of his nose brushing my chin briefly. "I think so," he rasped, and one of his hands clutched feebly at my frock coat lapel.

"What happened?" I asked, as delicately as I could.

He buried his face against my waistcoat, giving a muffled reply. "Absinthe."

I petted his back lightly, ignoring the intensity of Enjolras's gaze. "I see. Rest, Jehan, you don't have to speak."

Louison drifted back out of the room, wiping her chapped palms on her apron. After a moment or two of dead silence, the only sound being the whispering breaths drifting in and out of Prouvaire's mouth, Enjolras, leaning back against the wall, began to whistle softly. I turned to glare at him, but my irritation vanished when I noted his expression, the wistful sadness in it that twisted my heartstrings into knots. I shivered as an image of the previous night returned to me briefly.

__

His face, so young, hair clinging to a damp forehead, as he leaned over me. He was stroking my arm, with an almost physical attempt to overcome his horror as he traced my scars with one finger. Up and down, over and over went the soft, tickling fingertip, making that sign of the cross with smooth precision, following the skipping white patterns that had remained carved into me when the moment's pleasure had ended. He seemed morbidly fascinated by it; I was disgusted, lying very still and forcing down my bile. Nakedly trapped beneath him, I took in a long breath and released it carefully as he shifted position a bit, his hip coming to rest against my thigh as he folded his arms over my chest and rested his chin on top of them. He was watching me very carefully, so much so that if I had breathed slightly out of rhythm, he would have taken note and resolved to question me about it later.

"Do you hate me?" he said finally, his brow furrowing a bit.

"Not at all," I answered truthfully, and he smiled as I added, "Do you really think me so callous? In spite of everything, in spite of my own foolish pride, I do love you."

"You already know how I feel for you." He gave me a long, slow blink. "It hasn't changed."

"And what of this?" I lifted my mangled wrist slightly.

He hardly gave it a glance. "It frightens me."

I was silent for a moment, and then at last I said, "That's good, then. You haven't lost your reason."

Prouvaire pulled away from me, his eyes downcast. I released him without comment as he struggled to stand. It was when he tripped on his own feet and crumpled mid-step that Enjolras stood, catching him quickly.

"Careful," my roommate said, and Jehan just stared at him blankly, but allowed himself to be led to a chair.

"I can do it myself," the poet muttered, and I could detect something in his voice that I'd never heard before; he was angry.

"Jehan..." I stood and tried in vain to catch his eyes. "I owe you the most profound of apologies for last night."

He smiled vaguely, his gaze trained on the floorboards beneath his feet. Enjolras leaned his body against the wall, his limbs languidly arranged. Prouvaire said softly, "It's all right, Combeferre. I suppose...I suppose you must think me awfully childish for all this."

"I don't." I sat beside him, folding my hands in my lap. "I would never blame you for something that was out of your control."

He stood shakily, reaching into his pocket and groping around a bit. Before I could say anything, he took my hand and pressed a crumpled piece of paper into my palm, closing my fingers around it.

"I...I wrote this for you." And without another word, he stumbled to the rue des Grès exit and yanked the door open, disappearing into the street beyond. Enjolras stared after him, averting his gaze with a flinch when the door swung heavily shut again.

I hesitated momentarily before tucking the piece of paper into the inside pocket of my frock coat. Enjolras turned back to me.

"Aren't you going to read it?"

"When time permits," I answered, and my eyes told him, _When you're not with me_. He paled a little, reading that perfectly from my look, and folded his arms over his chest as if to protect himself from a blow to the midsection.

"You don't have to worry," he murmured darkly. "_I'm_ not worried."

I shook my head, too tired and bemused to even wonder what he was referring to. "Enjolras, I have to catch up on my studies, so I'm going home."

"Studies?" He glanced up, puzzled, then suddenly smiled. "Oh. Right. Do you know that I had nearly forgotten that we attend classes at all, much less study?"

I felt a wan smile twist my own lips, and I stood, touching his shoulder lightly. "If you need me, that's where I'll be."

I was nearly at the door before his parting shot ripped into me from behind: 

"Not studying for your dissection course, I hope."


	13. Conversation

"Well, it isn't that way, obviously," I amended myself quickly, noting Courfeyrac's eyebrow arch marginally as he bent to sip his coffee. "Enjolras and I...we're..."

"Out of your minds?" He winked at me. "I know."

I sighed. "This is no time for flippancy, Courfeyrac."

"This is a perfect time for flippancy," he chuckled. "It's almost ludicrous, this entire situation. Take a step back and look at it, Etienne. You've been killing yourself slowly for years over a child you've loved, who's no longer a child, and now that you have him, you can't stop the killing. Why can't you make up your mind, my pet?"

I brushed away his bold fingers stroking my hair. "Stop it, Courfeyrac. You make it all sound so heinous, or even sickly ironic. Both you and Enjolras have a flair for the dramatic."

"Oh, I know," Courfeyrac replied calmly. "But I know you're not suicidal. I don't know what you feel when that blade kisses you, or why, but I know that you love how it makes you feel, that you can't live without that. I don't claim to understand any of it, and I can't tell you what to do."

I bit my lip. "I'm confused about it myself. And your flirting isn't helping."

"Fine. I'll keep my hands off you." He pointedly sat on his hands, laughing all the while. "You know not to expect any better from me, and I'm sure Enjolras has more suspicions about Jehan than he has about Courfeyrac."

"I hate it when you refer to yourself in the third person." I dropped my eyes, refusing to let myself be baited into a talk about Jehan. That wasn't why I was here, in some dim café, at some godforsaken hour, sipping coffee and having a relatively civil conversation with a man who usually isn't interested in _that_ sort of oral repartee.

Courfeyrac is a man who doesn't actually warrant a description, and I would almost be content to leave it at the fact that he is often amorous and roughly attractive, which was a frequently potent combination. When taken into account that he spends most of his time ignoring in his friends what other people would criticize, it's small wonder that he's rarely alone on any given night. He's even taken me in once in a while, on those nights when I hated myself and couldn't face my roommate, and I suppose from all those silly, pointless encounters has sprung a sort of skewed love between us.

"You're a hell of a man, 'Tienne," he said, not unkindly, leaning back a bit in his chair and draining his coffee in one gulp, "but you're quite lacking when it comes to a sense of humor."

I stared blankly. "Humor? You have an odd sense of it yourself."

"So are you going to go back and talk to Enjolras, or am I escorting you to my place tonight?" He scrunched up his face a bit at the frigidity of the coffee, then flashed me a winning smile.

"I suppose I'm heading home, Courfeyrac," I said sweetly, patting his hand and standing. "You're awfully dear to offer, but I'm afraid Enjolras may have a thing or two to say about a rendezvous at your place."

"You really _do_ like him, don't you?" He cocked his head at me, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "I don't think I've ever heard you so concerned about what somebody thinks of your whereabouts."

I stopped at the door, turning to glance at him. "You know, I've never thought of it that way. He's become so much more to me than I thought I could let somebody be."

"Well, no man can decide who he'll fall for, I suppose," he said matter-of-factly, and the crooked smile he shot me made me flush. "If you're lucky enough to find someone you can live with contentedly for the rest of your life, you've got to have the sense to hang on like mad, kid."

"It's not a question of me living with him; it's a question of him being able to stay with me and keep his sanity. I'm terrified that I'm going to drive him away, Courfeyrac."

He looked me up and down. "But not terrified enough to _stop_ this lancet nonsense."

"I don't expect you to understand that, _mon ami_," I replied shortly, and brushed out the door without hearing his retort, which was likely echoing in the quiet of the room I had left behind me.

I took my time heading home, concentrating on each individual step, each muffled click of my boot heels on the paving stones, each spill of the streetlamps on the walk. My hand went involuntarily to my coat pocket, fingering the crumpled paper there. Unable to contain my reluctant curiosity, I slipped it out and unfolded it, pausing beneath a streetlamp near the University. It was written in a frightened pencil scrawl on what seemed to be a scrap of brown paper bag, and I was perversely intrigued by the desperation that radiated like heat from that little bit of torn paper. Instead of the maudlin poem I'd half been expecting, there was simply this:

_I can't find the words..._

I know I ought to try to explain, but how can I? How can I tell you what it means for me to see you hurting? You can't understand [here the pencil was smudged almost to the point of illegibility] _I don't want...I never wanted you to be in love with me, can't you see? I only wanted you to realize...to _know_ me, through and through. To see that I care, that I'm only a poet, and a poor one at that, but that I have a soul which needs the small comfort of a Savior. A god, someone who I can believe in...don't you even know what you've taken from me tonight? _

You think you've broken my heart, I know, but what would you say if you knew how much deeper it runs?

I stopped reading, crumpling the paper in my fist, almost unaware that I was on the verge of tears. If he had only said that aloud to me, that night, I would have known precisely what he was talking about...I'm afraid that I had quite underestimated his affections, categorizing them as simple love. But I should have learned by now that nothing in life is simple...

I almost wished that I had been near Enjolras when I read it, because the backlash of helplessness was so overwhelming that I nearly lost my footing right there in the middle of the street. Enjolras would have known what to say; he always did have an affinity for words. He would force me to lose the guilt in lust, rather than in blood, as I was seriously considering at the moment, and he would take control, take the burden from my shoulders and tell me to relax. Enjolras was a remarkable foil for me (or I was for him), and he would not have hesitated to fulfill that role.

But he wasn't there. I began walking again, focusing on the stones beneath my feet, trying to tell myself that the solution to this was not to go home and end up in Enjolras's bed. It was an inviting possibility, and one that I knew he would not be adverse to, but I made a valiant attempt at convincing myself that it wouldn't solve a thing.

All my efforts towards abstinence would have succeeded, too, if I had not arrived home to find him lying on my bed, calmly reading Rousseau and seeming more self-possessed than I could ever hope to be, had I one thousand years to develop that confidence. He did not glance up as I entered, his head inclined slightly in a sort of cockiness that set my nerves on edge, and my heart envied him his nonchalance; how I wish I could attain to that level of detachment.

"Read anything interesting tonight?" I asked him as I slipped off my outer garments, hanging them beside the door.

He didn't answer, and I turned to look at him. He had begun to undress slowly, preparing for bed, the Rousseau laid unobtrusively on top of my coverlet.

"Enjolras." I stepped forward. "You can't sleep there; go to your own bed."

Silence. He glanced at me, and when I caught a glint in his eyes, I realized what he was playing at, and how quickly I was falling into his carefully-devised trap.

"I wasn't with Prouvaire tonight, you know," I said softly.

He was quiet for a few moments, then, "I know," he said finally, sitting on my bed in nothing but trousers.

I swallowed, hard. He was making it so difficult. "But I know you suspected."

"Who were you with?"

"Courfeyrac." I crossed the room to his bed, sitting stiffly on it.

He gazed over at me from beneath low, dark eyelashes. "Come to bed." His voice was so unwavering, so certain, that I felt that somehow, it was an unintended command. I obeyed without argument, tired of fighting a losing battle against his charm. When I woke beside him in my usurped bed the next morning, I felt little regret.

Well, at least I hadn't ended up in _his_ bed.


	14. Visitation

"All right, all right, I'm coming," I mumbled, rubbing the back of my neck in exhaustion. Whoever was at the door continued to pound on it with surprising persistence. Enjolras stirred in his bed, groaning softly.

"Answer it, somebody," he muttered, still half-asleep.

I tugged on my shirt, stumbling a bit, and yanked open the door, expecting to have to meet Courfeyrac's grinning face or perhaps Joly's sniffles and Bossuet's fist raised to knock again. Instead, an older, distinguished gentleman was standing there, walking cane in hand and wife beside him. I blinked hard, trying to figure out just what the hell was going on.

"Can I...help you?" I must have looked exceedingly foolish, gaping at them on my own threshold with my hair unbound.

The man stared back at me, then his eyes narrowed; they were striking eyes, cold blue. "Is this number seven?"

"It is," I replied, folding my arms over my chest in some attempt to look slightly more decent in my unbuttoned shirt. It was then that I noticed the young woman standing a few paces behind the couple. She was dressed gorgeously, her tawny hair delicately prepared and encrusted with ribbon, and she was staring at me in shock. Most likely I was the first half-dressed man she'd ever seen. I cleared my throat, feeling a blush rise to my cheeks.

"Who are _you_, then?" the stranger asked me crisply.

"I beg your pardon? I live here." I was too surprised to even be angry, but I heard Enjolras shift in bed behind me, and I knew he was listening. "Who did you expect, messieur?"

"My son." The man's eyes flicked over me condescendingly. "And you are certainly not he."

I distinctly heard Enjolras groan behind me, and I asked quietly, "What is your name, messieur?"

"Enjolras."

"I see." I bit my lip and gave Madame Enjolras a shallow bow. "My name is Combeferre. I am your son's roommate."

"Oh?" A brown eyebrow slightly raised in surprise, and that was all.

"He's sleeping at the moment..."

"Wake him up, please, there's a good lad." I almost expected him to pet me on the head as he would a loyal hound-dog.

Before I could respond, a tired voice behind me spoke. "I'm awake, but I'm not decent. Give me a moment or two."

I smiled apologetically and closed the door in the face of the gentleman, who was fuming silently at the humiliation he was being put through. I turned to my roommate, who was climbing laboriously out of bed, as though his limbs were leaden.

"What's wrong with you?" I asked gently, wandering over to him and kissing the top of his head. "Not happy to see your parents?"

He scowled. "Did they bring that hussy with them?"

"Hussy?" I just stared at him. "You mean that girl who was with them? She was very pretty. Is she your fiancée?"

He glared at me, then suddenly took my face in both hands and kissed me soundly with a bruising force. "I'll never marry her," he rasped out, releasing me. 

I stumbled back from him, my head spinning, and managed to mumble fondly, "Get dressed, would you. They're waiting."

"All in good time." A hint of a smile smoothed his lips as he pulled on his trousers, shouldering his braces into place.

By the time he got around to opening the door, I expected his father to have already staved it in with his cane. Marcelin seemed unconcerned, brushing his hair from his eyes as he faced his family coolly.

"Mother. Father." He nodded to them in turn, and gave a sort of grunt in acknowledgment of the girl beside them. "Hn."

Watching he and his father try to glare each other down was not my idea of stimulating. I came up behind him, murmuring in his ear, "Behave," and in the same breath inviting his parents into the room. M. Enjolras gave me a suspicious scowl, but followed us into the room; his wife and the girl trailed after him.

I laughed nervously, picking up some scattered articles of clothing as I went. "I'm sorry that it isn't very presentable in here...neither of us has a knack for housekeeping, I'm afraid...We find ourselves too busy nowadays for such--" Enjolras elbowed me none-too-subtly, and I shut my mouth.

He turned to his parents, ignoring their younger companion. "What are you doing here?"

His father looked as though he may explode at him, but his mother just smiled sweetly and said, "Can't parents come see their children every once in a while? After all, you never come visit us, Marcelin."

"We've brought someone you should meet," the older Enjolras added through gritted teeth, "whom you have not been enough of a gentleman to recognize so far."

The girl surprised everyone by speaking. Her voice was lower than I'd expected it to be, not at all the tinkling giggle that many of her sort had. "It's all right, Monsieur Enjolras, really. I hadn't expected Marcelin to remember me." She turned to my roommate, while settling primly on the edge of my bed. "We were children together, but I am certain he has known many young ladies in his lifetime, and of what consequence should one more be?"

My roommate bowed his golden head a little, then ran one hand through his hair. I could almost feel one of his patented harsh replies coming, and I wasn't disappointed. "I don't recognize you, so if you wish to be acknowledged, you might do me the favor of giving me a name to associate with your face."

"Marianne."

"That's a common name," my roommate snapped. "It sounds better when accompanied by a Phrygian cap."

His father's face turned crimson, almost purple with rage. Marcelin ignored him.

"At any rate, I shan't marry you, so you would do well not to dwell on the possibility of gaining my affections. And I'm sure Etienne would appreciate your not sitting on his bed."

I glanced up meekly at the mention of my name. "It's all right, really. I don't mind..."

M. Enjolras was on his feet in an instant, the back of his hand cracking against my friend's cheek. "You beastly ingrate! How dare you speak to any friend of our family in such a manner, much less a lady!" Marcelin, who'd been knocked to the floor, crouched there like a cat ready to spring, his muscles tensed and his head bent, refusing to meet anyone's eyes. His father just shook his head, trembling furiously. "If I didn't know any better, I'd think you'd become as bad as those workers and low-lifes you associate with." He shot me a vicious look that clearly told me that he thought of me as little more than a bothersome insect. "Is this fellow an example of that scum, Marcelin? He's no aristocrat, that's certain."

Fire shot through my veins, and my mouth tightened into a hard little line; Enjolras was mortified, flinching and raising his eyes with the fury of an avenging angel, and I crossed the room to him, determined to stop him before he committed something he'd regret. Kneeling behind him and placing my hands on his shoulders, I effectively pinned him in place, and he was like coiled wire under my palms.

"I'll hear nothing against my friends," he said finally, his voice little more than a growl, and I prayed that I was the only one who noted the wisp of an emphasis he placed on the last word.

"Henri," my friend's mother soothed, coming forward and rubbing her husband's shoulder, "don't be cross with Marcelin. He's just a boy; he doesn't know how to act around ladies. And," she added, winking at me, "I think his friends are charming."

I felt the warmth spreading over my face, and Enjolras relaxed ever-so-slightly beneath my hands. He rose to his feet, fingers brushing lightly against mine as he waved my hands away; the blush on my cheeks deepened.

"Thank you, Maman," the blond young man replied, brushing off his trousers more out of indignation than dirtiness. "I appreciate your support, but the truth of it is, I refuse to marry whomever and whenever you two decide I ought to."

"You'd rather live in sin all your life?" His father was staring at me as he said it, with an intensity that frightened me. God, was it that obvious...? "Grow up, Marcelin, and take some responsibility."

"I don't know what 'sin' you'd be referring to," the youth answered smoothly.

"Don't think I was born yesterday. I know what kind of girls boys your age attract; don't forget that I was that age once, too."

It took me a moment to become calm enough to release the breath I'd been holding. That had been too damned close, and I couldn't shake the fear that I was acting as transparent as glass.

"You know I'm not like that." My roommate ran his fingers through his hair.

His father's eyes narrowed. Without taking his eyes from those matching eyes glaring back at him, he said quietly, "Will all of you give us a moment or two?"

The girl, Marianne, stood from her seat to obey, and Mme. Enjolras followed her after shooting her son an odd, pitying glance. I hesitated, but Enjolras turned to me, his lips pressed into a thin line.

"It's all right," he whispered, giving me a light nudge with his fingertips. "I'll take care of it."

"Take care of _yourself_," I replied, trying to smile and failing. As the door closed behind me, I turned to find myself facing two curious women.

"What are you to him?" his mother murmured, but her voice was drowned out by the muffled shouting echoing through the paper-thin walls. I cringed at Enjolras's tone, which was high and strained, with a belligerent rise and fall, reaching a crest, when we could hear every word, then falling to a valley, where it was likely little more than regular speaking volume. I'd heard that tone before, but rarely ever directed at me, and never with that fearsome ferocity behind it. His father's was something new, a sort of roar that tended to crush any other voices trying to speak beneath his.

"What are you thinking?!"

"I'm a human being, with my own will, and my own life, and I don't want--"

"Since when is anything your choice to make? I know what you want--you want to be left alone, to get into whatever trouble that suits you here in Paris, with no controls, no rules, just a mysterious source of funds coming in from the south somewhere!"

"--If only you knew what I want! You never cared!"

"It isn't that your wants are insignificant, Marcelin, but at your age, you don't even know what you want. You don't even have a taste of life yet, and you don't see what it'll take for you to fit into this world; your mother and I know, and we're trying to help you, son."

"I don't want your help! And I don't want to marry! I'm only seventeen, for Christ's sake!"

"What would you rather, Marcelin?! Tell me that!"

Silence for a moment, then sullenly: "I want to stay here with Combeferre. I want to be left in peace to live my life."

Pandemonium erupted at that. "Combeferre! That skinny rat?! You would pick a sad existence with that thing for chaste company, in place of a prosperous, rewarding marriage to Mlle. Grenville?"

"You asked what would make me happy! I'm happy with him."

I could feel the women's eyes on me, and I fixed my gaze on a hairline fracture running up the hallway's plaster wall. It took physical effort to force down the panic that was rising within me, telling myself that Enjolras knew what he was doing, and that it was for the best.

"Happy?!" The rumbling shout from inside the room froze my blood.

"He's my lover! Or are you so oblivious that you couldn't see that?"

The way he pronounced that single word held such a confused mix of emotions that I felt that he had bared his soul on accident. In the full silence following that, I heard his mother gasping, and Marianne took a few steps towards me, as if she was curious about what sort of man her intended would choose over her. I felt that I should say something to reassure them, but I was interrupted by the door creaking open slowly, and M. Enjolras appearing framed in the doorway. He was very cold, the shock fleeing his face as he stared at me, and as he paled in fury, I felt my face grow redder in embarrassment.

"Is this true?" he hurled at me, and I nodded wordlessly, my expression still looking quite bemused, I'm sure.

Marcelin slipped past him, into the hallway, and placed himself between us. "Let him alone. I'm the one you're angry at. If you have to hit someone, hit me."

His father shook his head calmly. "I don't intend to hit anyone, my boy, but I may kill him if he stands there another moment." His eyes told me he was not jesting, and I started away from the hate radiating from them.

"Henri..." Mme. Enjolras stepped forward reluctantly, but her husband waved her away.

"No, not this time. Your son wants to be this peasant's whore, and you're trying to placate me. But no, I won't stand for anyone turning my son against me."

He took a step towards me, but Marcelin beat him to it, grabbing my wrist. I flinched as my wound throbbed beneath his grip, but he pretended not to notice. "I'm going with you, Etienne." He dragged me down the hall as the cacophony of arguing voices followed us, the male one subjugating them all.

"Marcelin! MARCELIN!"

**********************

"What are they thinking?! I'm not a slave to their wishes!" He was furious, pulling me down the street. "I'm an adult now. I do as I please, I love whom I please, and I'll bed whomever suits me!" I shushed him, as the people on the street were beginning to stare.

"I'm sorry," I mumbled. "But why did you tell them?"

"What else could I do?" He turned to look at me, his expression pained. "I couldn't marry her, and telling them she was unacceptable would only have been postponing the inevitable. They'll try to separate us, you know that?"

"Are you going to let that happen?" I asked gently, fingering his hair. "Isn't that what must happen, in the end?"

"No!" Enjolras turned abruptly, taking my face in both of his hands. "I'll never do what they tell me, ever again. And you like me, don't you? You wouldn't leave me?"

"You know I wouldn't."

His expression was almost possessive, his eyes glittering. "And I wouldn't either. They can't force me to leave; there's nothing they can do, short of kidnapping me."

The morning sun silhouetted him from behind, giving him a mysterious beauty, and I touched his face with one fingertip; it was bruised from his father's blow, and he twitched slightly at the contact. "I can't understand why I need you as much as I do," I said. "I'm solitary by nature, so why do I feel the emptiness of my existence so acutely when you're not near me?"

"It's all right," he murmured. "I thought myself a loner when I was younger, but you were so kind when I met you...You drew me to you from that first day, and I realized that I didn't _have_ to be alone." He drew me into an embrace, and I stroked his hair, laying my head on his shoulder. People passing us on the street stared, open-mouthed, but I couldn't bring myself to care at the moment.

A flash of colored clothing drew my eye from over his shoulder and across the street. "Bahorel, coming your way," I whispered to him as a warning. "Joly and Bossuet are with him."

He released me gently, his hands resting on my hips a second longer than necessary. Our friends had noticed us, and were heading our way. Bahorel practically scampered up to us, laughing so loudly that it actually hurt my ears, and the other two followed him at a more relaxed pace.

"Ah, Enjolras! Just the man I was looking for!" He looped a friendly arm around my roommate's shoulders, winking conspiratorially. "Eh, but what a spectacle you're making of yourself with Whats-'is-name here."

I gave him a mock frown, and he laughed explosively again, ruffling my hair. "Don't worry, 'Ferre, I love you too. Just not as much as some people do, it seems," shooting an oblique look at Enjolras.

"I think it's sweet," Joly smiled.

Enjolras fought down a blush, his face contorting into a wicked look. "Who asked you?" he muttered, staring at his boots.

"But of course, it isn't as though we haven't all known for quite some time now what Enjolras has wanted from Etienne," Laigle resumed, splitting a look with Joly. "He's not a man skilled at hiding his feelings..."

Enjolras's expression darkened further, and I touched his arm lightly, chuckling to myself. "Don't let them upset you, Enjolras. They're just being asses, as usual." 

"Well, I say--!" Laigle feigned being affronted, and Enjolras smirked a little, no doubt feeling somewhat avenged.

"At any rate, we can bring them with us to have a drink or two," Bahorel said to his two companions, "so they can grope each other to their hearts' content in Corinthe's second story room and not get themselves ostracized from polite society by conducting their business on the street corner."

Enjolras tensed at the term 'ostracized,' but he followed anyway, surprisingly docile. I longed to break his pensive mood and draw him into conversation, and as we found ourselves outside the dilapidated façade of the wineshop, I took his hand, guiding him to the rear of the entourage and kissing him carefully, as if he might shatter at too much pressure. Joly noted us, laughing softly and shaking his head, but he didn't interrupt. Marcelin reciprocated, his tongue tickling mine, and I clutched his arm to stop myself from groaning into his mouth.

"Love you," I said as I pulled away. He didn't reply, just smiled, and took hold of my sleeve, leading me into Corinthe after our friends.


	15. Interlude III: Prouvaire

Prouvaire traced the line of Combeferre's jaw gently, his eyes wet. He sank slowly to his knees before the older boy, wrapping his arms around the back of Combeferre's knees and nuzzling his hip.

"Etienne...brother...love...completely yours..."

Slender fingers tangled themselves in his pale hair, holding him close, and Jehan raised his chin, grasping at the waistline of his companion's trousers with his teeth.

"Let me worship you," he hissed around the thick fabric clenched in his mouth. "...mmhn...worship..."

There was no reply, only a slight shift in position as Combeferre undressed in silence, his fingers moving efficiently and without ceremony. Prouvaire accepted his spectacles with the gravity suited to a religious sacrament, kissing the spot on the frame where it had rested on the bridge of Combeferre's nose.

"Muse...my Erato." With ritualistic gravity worthy of a Catholic mass, the young poet wrapped his naked muse in a cloth, pale as the face of the moon and smoothly spun with fine threads, and clasped it at the shoulder with a gilded brooch. Combeferre bowed his head to accept the crown of laurels that was set upon his dark curls, which were loose on his shoulders and were dancing and twisting in the breeze.

Prouvaire, struck by the sight, dropped back to his knees, his eyes squeezed shut. He shivered in barely-contained ecstasy, stroking the hem of the robe with trembling fingertips, murmuring intricate mixtures of gibberish, Latin, and Greek in a voice tinged with awe.

It was the feeling of something dripping onto the back of his hand that brought Jehan out of his trance. He raised his head lethargically, the eyes lidded and green with satisfaction, and was suddenly and rudely jolted out of his euphoria. Combeferre was gazing peacefully down at him, one arm slightly raised over the poet, as if in benediction. A solitary crimson trickle had snaked its way down from four deep furrows in the marble of his wrist and was dripping lazily onto Prouvaire's hand.

"Combeferre..." the word slipped off Prouvaire's tongue with a strangling sort of fear, but the older boy's eyes were clouded and gray, and he gave no sign of having heard.

As Jehan stared, horrified, the trickle became a steady stream, and Combeferre raised his other hand to show the long fingernails with blood crusted beneath them. The dark-haired boy's pallid lips formed the barest of smiles, his entire body quivering, and Prouvaire scrambled back from him as he crumpled to the ground in a pile of cloth, flesh, and blood.

Suddenly, a white hand slipped out to break Combeferre's fall, and as Prouvaire watched, his fallen idol was clutched tightly against the body of a tall young man, shining as brilliant as dawn and as terrible as death. His eyes were large, predatory, with a glint in them that seemed to signal the end of the world as Prouvaire knew it; it was some sort of avenging archangel, come from the beyond to intervene, and standing before the poet in his full frightening glory. His beauty was lost on Jehan, who shielded his eyes from the piercing light with one hand.

"What are you...?" Prouvaire whispered, reaching out for his muse with his free hand. "Please...don't hurt him..."

The angel gave him a pale smile, his golden waves of hair tossing about his face like waves on the sand. "He is mine now, and I will care for him."

Tears sparkled on Jehan's cheeks. "But..."

"He needs me now," the being said, its eyes softening as it lifted Combeferre effortlessly. "His time with you has passed, and you will learn to stand alone." The muse buried its face in the angel's chest, and one hand went to stroke the angel's cheek, leaving red streaks across the glowing porcelain skin. Jehan felt his heart shatter.

"But...how will I ever write again?"

"You will find your voice..." The reply drifted in the air behind the angel as it turned its back to the poet and vanished, taking with it Jehan's entire world. The blackness left behind was all-consuming, and Prouvaire felt that he had been struck blind, gazing but failing to see.

He blinked, hard, and realized that someone was covering his eyes.

"Welcome back," came a rough voice beside his ear. "You must've been having a hell of a daydream there."


End file.
